"Good," he says curtly, letting her flat tone roll right off of him. Sarkan really has no intention of getting himself chucked in the dungeons for pretty theft.

Without further ado, and their undeniably awkward little entanglement finished, he turns his back on Sina. The less he acknowledges her severe condition, the less he must confront it (and the reality that his own shard may slowly consume him one day. At least here, in Thedas, there is no need to immediately burn shard-bearers like the corrupted sods covered in sickly green and black gangrene in his own realm. Luckily for one such as himself, too. Or unluckily, if it did no more than mark them for prolonged suffering and death without hope of reversal.

Sarkan frowns, shrugging away his grim thoughts, and lazily waves a palm past his left ear yet again and chants a foreign string of syllables: "Niemalum." He snaps his fingers a couple of times in front of his ear, then draws the earring back out of his pocket and presses it to his lobe. After a moment's thought, an idea occurs to him.

"Here's something useful you can do," he asserts without bothering to look at her again. "Go and tend to the flowers on the far end of the garden. Make some noise over there, some loud, some quiet."